•C h a p t e r f i f t y - o n e•
-R a t s ' r i g h t s-
☾ ☾ ☾ ☾
♪ Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regrets and mistakes, they're memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste? ♪
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I didn't say a word the whole way in the car. Theo said something for a while, but I didn't answer it.
It still bothers me that I almost kissed him. And the worst part is that I wouldn't regret it.
I think I must be losing my mind.
I swallow when I stop on the street where I see my house. I haven't even driven by it once in all this time.
I didn't want to see it.
I take off my seatbelt and rub my eyes. I see there's not a single car in the driveway.
"Do you just live in that house with your sister?" he asks while we get out of the car.
"Lived. I lived there," I correct him. "And her slick boyfriend still lives there," I say, making my way to the door. "You know that. We inherited millions from our parents who died before my eyes."
Theo doesn't answer it, and I'm glad he didn't. I stand by the door and start listening if I can't at least hear the heart from inside.
But nothing.
Quiet. Total silence.
I'll try to reach up on the doorframe to get the key, but I can only touch it with the tip of my middle finger. "Damn it!" I mutter angrily because I can't even gracefully sneak into someone's house.
Or better - sneak into my house.
"Let me see," Theo says, then stands behind me to reach there. My body freezes when I feel his chest touch my back.
Whenever he takes a breath, he pushes himself against me. And I know I should pull away.
I know very well, but I can't bring myself to do it. I turn to face him and I don't realize I'm now trapped between him and the door.
He rests one hand on the wooden door. I can't even stop watching his face, which I would have best beaten up a few months ago and now...?
Damn it, I've got to stop. This can't go on. It's Theo Raeken, after all. He was trying to kill us all. But on the other hand, he saved my life, went through hell and proved to me that he's not the same...
"Val?" he asks, amused, when you notice me staring at him. "Do you like what you see?"
"I wasn't looking at you, okay?" I say, and I look at the ground better, because if he looked at me like that any longer, my face would turn into a tomato.
"Yeah, right," he laughs. "Make sure you don't get saliva coming from here in next time," he says, touching my lip with his thumb and making me look at it.
No saliva, okay? Still it's not that bad.
I try to shake off that feeling of lust, but I can't. His lips approach me, and I can feel his breath on my face.
I look into his blue eyes and I recognize two emotions.
Lust and amusement.
He reaches for the handle and opens the door wide after unlocking it. He takes a step back and points me inside. "After you, Ria."
I blink and realize he's playing with me. I shake my head and walk down the hall, where I haven't stood for a good few weeks. Or months.
I take a deep breath and notice that there are no more pictures of me hanging around. In fact, there aren't even pictures of our parents.
Only hers with Jacob.
I think she did it because she could never get over the fact that they were really dead, but I wanted the pictures of them. Now she has no reason to look at them.
I walk up the stairs and stop outside my room. "Am I missing something here?"
"Feeling at home?" Theo asks and looks at the wall where my sister's picture hangs. "Your sister?"
"Yeah, the one who doesn't remember me existing," I reply, opening the door to my room where the power-training machine is located. "Nice. Jacob's turned this place into a fitness center," I retort angrily and walk in.
I want to kick the machine, but Theo stops me. "It would be good if someone didn't send cops after us because we're destroying a stranger's house."
"My house!" I point my finger at him in disbelief.
"Okay, your house."
"Something's missing," I mutter, glancing at the scratched walls. That's when I realize what I'm missing is my beloved cat. "Where's Milo?!" I yelp uneasily and run up the stairs.
"Who? Who the hell is Milo?" Theo walks quickly behind me, following me as I look under the couch and into the kitchen cupboards. "What are you looking for?"
"My cat," I say irritably, trying to find him. "I don't know where he is. He couldn't disappear with me, either. What could possibly happen to him?"
"Relax, maybe he's just lying in one of the thousands of rooms that are here?"
"There are only 7 of them," I say, as if he were a fool. "And Jane hated my cat. She would never keep him."
"Why did she buy it for you, then?" Theo looks at me, puzzled.
"Because he kept me company when she went to college and got shifts at the hospital at night," I say, sitting on the ground. I put my hands over my eyes and start thinking about what to do next. "What if she threw him out?"
"Then he'll find his way back, he's a cat," he shrugs, and rolls up a glance at the door that's between the hallway and the kitchen. "What's in there?"
"Basement," I reply, getting off the ground. "Do you think...?"
I'm not going to finish because I'm afraid it couldn't happen then.
"That there might be something of yours," he says for me, and walks down the stairs. A light comes on automatically and I notice there's papers strewn all over the ground. "What happened here?"
"Jane's probably looking for something," I shrug dispassionately. "She's got all the paperwork from work here."
We try to look for something here, but it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. There's nothing here. I don't even know how long we've been looking here, but there's nothing here.
Nothing at all. My hope evaporated at the speed of light.
"There must be something," Theo mutters.
"Don't bother looking. It's futile," I snap back, and I want to go upstairs, but I stop when I hear the door click and noises. I take a step back because I don't like it. I notice Theo looking at me curiously, but I just show him to be quiet.
"Jacob! Take the cat down to the basement before I call a shelter! I mean, the cat's not supposed to be here. That's the 10th time this week!"
I exchange glances with Theo when the basement door opens. I grab his hand and squeeze him against the wall behind one of the wardrobes. I know I can't run away any more, so I turn around and my back is on Theo's chest.
He grabs me around the waist and squeezes me as close to him as possible so I can't be seen. I exhale deeply because his body on my back starts to warm me.
"Stay here, buddy," Jacob puts Milo under a plastic crate so he doesn't run away. "Jane?" he calls out loud. "What were you going to take up here?"
She doesn't answer, and I get nervous because Jacob is only four steps away from us. I squirm and feel Theo's breath hiss. He grabs me tighter and I put my hands on his.
"Jane?" he climbs three steps to hear her answer better.
I feel something pressing against my lower back. I look at Theo, who has his head against the wall behind him, trying to breathe regularly.
"Damn it, Theo, it's your phone, isn't it?"
"Sorry, I forgot that one in hell," he snaps softly, and it dawns on me what's really pushing my back. "Calm down," he whispers softly in my ear.
I try to breathe, but I can't. Not when I know what's causing him my body. Not when I know how my body reacts to him.
Jacob comes back down and grabs some papers from the ground. He's going up the stairs again. "We have to hurry to get you there in time."
As soon as the door slams shut, I expect my heart to calm down, but my pulse is still racing. I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.
Neither of us is moving, and I wonder what it would be like to give in to that feeling. What would it be like to get carried away by the current of temptation?
He puts his hands carefully on my waist and puts his arms around the back of me. I put my hands on his and let him touch me.
I get lost in a touch and reality pours over me like icy water when I hear a plastic crate move.
I break away from Theo and take a few steps back from him. "Fuck," I whisper, rubbing my face.
I don't understand what's happening to me. Why do I keep having these thoughts, damn it?!
Theo watches me, but he doesn't say anything. I don't even know what's going through his mind considering his face looks completely unreadable.
I take the crate off Milo and wait for him to run away from me, but instead he jumps into my hand and it can be heard purring.
"He remembers you."
"There's something left of me," I say and rubs Milo's fur, noting how a hunting knife is stuck in the carrier. "What the hell is that?"
"She wanted to kill your cat?"
Yeah, maybe if it didn't look more like a giant cleaver. "No, but my sister doesn't hunt, so what's she got here for?"
^^^^
"Do I really have to have the cat in my apartment now?" Theo complains while he watches me bathe Milo because he's filthy as hell.
Perhaps as one cat in a hundred, Milo doesn't mind the water. I think he resents the dirt on his coat, too.
"It's not your apartment, for that matter. It's not even my apartment. It's Derek Hale's apartment. And I don't see him standing around complaining," I shrug. "So shut up, Milo has more right to live here than you do."
Theo smiles slightly. "Fine, I like how the world has progressed. That cats have more rights than-"
"Rats," I smile sweetly at him. "Yes, at least my cat does."
"Are you still going to say something with a rat?" he asks, annoyed, and sees me taking a towel to dry the water dripping from Milo's fur.
"Yes."
I start wiping the cat down properly and notice that it's got a dirty collar as well. I take it off him and notice that the part where the owner's name is to be engraved -- my name is gone.
I sigh and notice a little card stuck in there with some dirt. It almost looks like an SD card. Where did the cat get it?
"What's that?" Theo leans over my shoulder and our eyes meet in the mirror. My cheeks turn a little pink when I think of what I've been thinking about recently.
I take my gaze off him and shrug. "I don't know. It looks like some kind of chip or SD card," I hand it to him.
I managed to get it off well by soaking that piece of dirt with water while I was bathing Milo.
"What do you want me to do about it?" he asks, perplexed, as if I had placed a completely unknown object in his hand.
"Hold it," I reply, wiping the clean collar on the towel. I walk in from the bathroom and I can hear Theo still walking behind me.
I put a collar on Milo, who's eating the food I bought him before we came back here. I stroke his ginger fur one last time and then sit on the seat.
Theo sits next to me, who hands me back a small object. "Now what?"
I sigh and touch the table in front of me for my laptop. "We're going to find out what it is and if it still works at all."
I wipe it on my jeans and then stick it in the right hole in the computer. I watch the first nothing happening and then finally some photos are uploaded, but my computer now decides it needs updating.
I have a hard time not hitting the computer with anger, but instead I put it back on the table and lean back wearily on the couch. I feel very tired and exhausted. It's like all the days I couldn't sleep just got to me.
I rest my head and close my eyes. "Will you wake me when it's finished?"
"Yeah, get some sleep. You need it," Theo replies, and I hear that he's getting up somewhere, but I don't open my eyes.
Instead, I try to sleep when a smooth substance suddenly touches me.
Theo covered me with a blanket.
^^^^
A loud meow wakes me, and I notice that it may already be the late afternoon of the next day. I want to move, but I can't because I have Theo's arm around my waist and I'm pressing against his chest.
He inhales and exhales slowly. I'm watching his relaxed face, I realize he looks more tired than I did yesterday.
I don't know why, but my brain teases me about raising my hand and stroking his face. I swallow when I feel him unconsciously stroking my back.
I touch his lips with my fingertips and don't miss the easy way he wiggles, but he doesn't wake up.
I hate Theo, so why am I treating him like this?
I try to hate him.
I should hate him.
It's his fault. And I should hate him. But why I can't hate him? Why is he making it so hard for me?
It's his fault, because if he hadn't changed, I would never have felt anything for him.
This scares me so much, I move away from him and run into the bathroom, where I lock myself in.
What the hell is going on? Maybe I'm insane. Maybe the Wild Hunt drove me crazy.
That's a pretty likely thing, because otherwise I could never have felt this way about someone like him.
I brush my teeth and walk back into the living room to find that Theo is no longer asleep, but is instead stroking my cat's fur.
"How come he likes you so much right away?" I ask, surprised.
"Because he's lonely," Theo replies. "When you're lonely, you don't really choose company," he says, glancing at me, and it dawns on me that he's referring to the fact that I brought him back to life.
"You're probably right," I sit in the seat and grab my laptop in my lap. I notice that it's all done and the photos are loaded.
I recognize them immediately, since I took them myself. I click on one photo and it appears to me enlarged.
It's me, Liam, Scott, Malia, Lydia, Kira and some guy I don't know. I frown and rub my forehead. "Who is he?" I point the finger at the guy who's there with us in the photo.
"What? What do you mean?" Theo asks, puzzled, and stops stroking Milo. "It's Stiles."
"Who?" I ask, confused, because I have no idea who he's talking about. "Who are you talking about?"
"Oh, my God, he's been erased too," he says, and then runs over for more photos. "How could I not have guessed when you were not talking only about him?"
"Wait," I say, when a video comes up that I know perfectly well what's in it. "This is what we need to show Liam and Scott."
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Feelings about this chapter?
Fun fact: originally, before I rewrote this chapter, Valeria and Theo started kissing in the basement in a rush of adrenaline.
Thank you so much for the reading and any support.
☑️Please don't be a silent reader...<3☑️
~Ava Bart